


on the nature of monstrous and lovely things

by orphan_account



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Me and my pretentious writing back at it again, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 06:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Let me take care of you,” he said. And Aziraphale was still crying, horrible, ugly sobbing that wrenched itself out of the very core of his being, from an unspeakable well of hurt and terror—he was supposed to be better than this, really, he was—but he couldn’t say no and he couldn’t say yes so he just leaned his head on Crowley’s shoulder and cried until he couldn’t anymore, until he had nothing more left to give.In which not everything is not perfect, but that is okay.





	on the nature of monstrous and lovely things

**Author's Note:**

> Let's play a fun game called "find-the-Six-of-Crows-reference"

The book was the same he’d been reading last night, Nietzsche’s _ Thus Spoke Zarathustra_. There was nothing like contemplating the death of God at—

“It’s_ seven _ in the _ morning_, angel,” Crowley bemoaned from somewhere next to his thigh, burrowing his face deeper into the pillow.

“You’re awake,” Aziraphale said, smiling.

“No thanks to you.” He turned his face slightly so that he could see from out of the side of the pillow. “Can’t you just _try _ to sleep for once?”

He pulled a face, marking his page and setting the book primly down on his lap. “It’s so _ unappealing_. I have never understood why you enjoy being unconscious for hours at a time when there’s so much you could be doing instead.”

“That’s the good part! Being unconscious, I mean. Sometimes, the best thing to be doing’s nothing at all.”

Aziraphale shrugged. “To each his own.”

“It’s too early for this,” Crowley complained, like a petulant child refusing to get out of bed on a school day. “And now I can’t even go back to sleep.”

“How tragic.”

“It really, really _ is_.”

“Well, that’s that, then. I’m off to make a cup of tea.” He stretched his arms, eliciting a series of pops and cracks as he rolled his shoulders. “Feel free to come down when you please.”

A hand snaked out from under the blanket, grabbing onto his arm. “But the bed’s so much comfier with you in it, angel.”

“You can’t trick me, you old serpent,” he said fondly, not moving.

The other hand joined the first, so that he was hugging Aziraphale’s arm. “Could stay here just a lil’ while longer.”

“Are you trying to _ tempt _ me?” he laughed.

“Nooo,” he lied. Then: “Why, is it working?”

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said running a finger of his free hand down Crowley’s arm. “You tell me.”

“It’s working. And you’re going to stay here with me forever and ever, and maybe I’ll manage to convince you to give sleeping a go, it’ll be great...”

He gave a long and theatrical sigh. “And so the wiles of the devil prevail. A cunning and knowledgeable adversary, I do grudgingly admit.” The sun had risen and was poking light through the curtains over the window, illuminating the room in faint tones of honey and ivory. There was nothing cold about this place, there was nothing clinically white or black. They had made something better, something different. Cobbled together, clumsy and unequal, they had created something worth keeping.

Crowley made a humming noise, already half-asleep. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to his hair, overflowing with love.

What made a home? Was it just the sum of its parts? A bookshelf and a tartan quilt here, a verdant plant and a jacket thrown over a chair there, a hundred thousand bits of memorabilia stacked and wired together, was that a home? Was it a person? A former demon with snake eyes, perhaps, and hands that worked like nimble machines, and a smile that could put the sun to shame. Was a home tangible at all? Was home there, just _ there_, in the scent of fresh-baked bread, or in the muted ticking of a clock somewhere in a room, in flitting bits of this-and-that? Aziraphale didn’t know. What he did know, in this moment, was that he loved Crowley more completely than he had ever loved anything or anyone before. He leaned back against the headboard with a contented sigh, and he stood watch.

. . .

The inhabitants of the small English village of South Kirwell had yet to properly make up their minds about the couple that had recently moved into the once-derelict cottage at the end of Nightingale Lane. The nicest of them called the two men charming, if eccentric, and the less kindly of them called them mad, and the worst called them—well, worse. These last disapproving comments were, thankfully, confined to Mr. Ridgely, and he’d never really liked anyone at all much, so they paid them no mind.

The village was rather partial to change, given that it didn’t get much of it. Conversations over tea at the Hill house had never been so vigorous.

“I’m just saying, this isn’t London. We want simple folk here. We like our quiet life.”

“There was nothing quiet about the way your son ran off with that city girl, Henrietta Hill,” Sara remarked from her own seat.

“And have you _ seen _ the colour of his lipstick? It’s practically a crime!”

“Sounds to _ me _you’re just jealous, Etta.” said Annalise.

“Jealous! Me!” she scoffed, and, admittedly, the reason for her remark had been jealousy, but that was neither here nor there.

“Right, well,” Josie said with the traces of a smirk, “I’ll be sure to ask him which type he uses next time I run into him at the bakery.”

Etta had never felt more scandalized in her life.

. . .

Crowley had taken to hiding flowers around the house. Little ones here and there; nestled inside his favourite mug, or pressed into the pages of whatever book he was reading at the moment, or braided into his hair as he 'slept'. They were promises, confessions, there when he was and was not. Little things, little things. There had been all sorts; sprigs of lilac lavender and regal alstroemerias, and bunches of drooping wisteria.

Aziraphale found the wild geraniums tucked into the pockets and under the lapels of his coat as he made to grab it off its hook. Smiling fondly, he took one and tucked it behind his ear, the sprig snapped so that the whole world smelled of summer, and placed the rest on the small vase he kept on the nightstand for specifically this purpose, amongst a small stack of books and a pair of spare sunglasses. They were beautiful. He’d tell Crowley that, later, and he’d say, _ I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about_, but his eyes would go softer around the edges and he’d kiss him nonetheless.

He pulled the coat on and left the room, to, as always and ever, look for Crowley.

. . .

“How old do you think they are?” Etta asked Henry, peering inconspicuously over her book at where they were sitting, at a little table in front of one of the local cafes.

Henry frowned, tossing another handful of feed at the ducks swimming lazily in the pond. She gave up on pretense and set the novel down on the park bench, just as he said, “Does it really matter?”

“Well—well, no, not strictly speaking, but I’m just asking...”

“They’ll think you’re strange, all that staring. Or that you’re against them.”

“But I’m not! There’s nothing wrong with wanting to _ know_, is there?”

“_They _ don’t know that.”

“They can’t be more than forty,” she said decisively, as the man with the sunglasses tried—and failed—to stifle his laughter at something the man with the white jacket had said. “Or maybe they are? What with the whole retiring thing. Or maybe it’s inheritance, one of them got left a good sum of money, somehow.”

“Etta,” Henry all but pleaded, as a duck swam up to the edge of the pond to gaze hungrily at his paper bag, “can’t you just leave the poor blokes alone?”

The man with the sunglasses stood up as his partner finished his coffee, offering his arm like quite the gentleman, which the other graciously took. “Oh, drat!” she hissed. They had started to walk their way, caught up in conversation. “Quick, Henry, talk to me about something!”

“What am I supposed to say?” he asked, looking alarmed.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake—forget it—” she fumbled for _ The Picture of Dorian Gray_, just flipping it open to her page as the two men walked by.

“—seemed quite eager to leave with something, so I said to him, I said: ‘_Better choose quick because we’re closing in two_,’ and he looked _ furious_—”

“I’ve always said you can be a right bastard when you want to be,” the sunglasses one said fondly.

“Oh, hush, you old serpent. Anyway, he put it back, and it’s a good thing, too, I mean, it was a Wilde and a first edition, and _ signed_, too—”

She released a slow breath as they passed, apparently without noticing them. “Thanks for the help, Henry.”

He shook his head disbelievingly. “You’re mad.”

“Not nearly as much as you.”

They lapsed into silence. Not uncomfortable, not exactly, but a bit too stiff to be exactly right.

“Listen to this, you’ve always liked this book, haven’t you?” she asked, when it had stretched on for too long. “_The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history_. Guess the chapter.”

Henry smiled at the familiar game, the same smile that had fascinated her from the day they’d met, the same smile she’d always loved. “Twenty.”

“Correct!” she cried. “How _ does _ he do it, ladies and gentlemen?”

“You can’t win me over with flattery, woman. I know all your tricks,” he said, but he kissed her on the cheek despite that.

Over in the pond, the duck quacked indignantly. It was _ hungry_.

. . .

The doorbell rang, and when Aziraphale opened it, Gabriel was standing there, hands clasped and posture ramrod straight, expectant. He almost closed the door right after seeing who it was, but instead he stood there, anything he might have said dying on his tongue as his mind dove decisively into panic mode.

“Angel, who is it?” Crowley called from somewhere inside—from the couch, he was on the couch, they’d been watching a movie. He spurred himself into motion, willing the gears his uncooperative brain to start spinning again. If he was here for Crowley, well, he wasn’t going to get him. He had no right to come to their little Eden to ruin it.

“No one,” he said back. “Be with you in a bit.” He rounded on Gabriel. “What are you doing here.” It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t delivered calmly as he would have liked; his words came out slowly, then all in a rush so it sounded something like _ what are youdoinghere_.

“Is that any way to greet a fellow angel?” Gabriel asked, still every bit as patronizing as ever. His violet eyes sparked, at odds with the grim set of his mouth. Whether it was with amusement or fury evaded him.

“I hardly consider you a ‘fellow’ angel anymore, Gabriel,” he said, curtly.

He nodded. “Understandable. Aziraphale, we need to talk.”

“Oh yeah?” Eyes narrowed, he asked, “What about.”

“The war.” _ Of course_, Aziraphale thought. _What else would it be_?

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said, starting to close the door, but Gabriel stuck his foot out to stop him.

“Listen,” he said, a bit urgently and with all the air of someone who had practiced a speech over and over again on their own, only for it to go very badly in presentation. “Why don’t you want it to happen? Humanity is going to live on, you know, up there, so what’s there to be gained from saving them?”

He had never been so painfully aware of his body; where did he put his hands, when he was trying not to crack the knuckles until they broke, when he was trying not to show how terrified he was? Weakness was not something he could afford to show, not here. He took a deep breath, despite not needing it. “Get the fuck away from me.”

“We were friends, once, Aziraphale,” he said, carrying resolutely on, and if Aziraphale hadn’t known better, he would have thought there was something almost sad in the way he said it. But he did know better.

“Yes. Once. But that was a long time ago, and then you tried to kill me with hellfire.”

“You deserved it.”

“Did I?” he demanded. The doorknob was cracking in his inhuman grip. After all this time, despite his best efforts, he still thought he deserved to die. “Did I deserve it? For what, for wanting to save them? I’ve seen war, Gabriel. I’ve seen it up close, and I’ve seen it in more detail than you or any of the other pricks up there or down below could possibly imagine. I’ve seen people blown apart, and I’ve seen people shot and suffering, I’ve seen starving and burning and sickness and people, people, people, and war is not something you want. Did you care to look down, while the Great War was going on down here? Or the second? Or any of the hundreds of them that came before?” He was well and truly unable to control the torrent of angry words spilling out of him, water finally bursting forth after the dam had been brought low. There were a million things he wanted to say to Gabriel, he wanted to grab him by his stupid stiff shoulders and shake him until something dislodged in his brain and he _ understood_. They had been friends once, but the key difference between them was that Gabriel had always loved in the most detached of ways, had always turned a blindside to human suffering while Aziraphale never had been able to.

“They had to dig trenches, so that they wouldn’t immediately be shot to bits by enemy fire, did you know? Trenches dug in the mud and the snow, and they were all freezing and young and recklessly afraid. They played cards while they waited between rounds of fighting. I was there, too. I met a young man named Richard, at one point. He was twenty-two and had a lover named Evie back home in London, and he was going to propose to her when he got back. He'd told me that the war had shown him just how quick life could be, and he wanted her to know how much he loved her before it was too late. He had a passion for playing chess, and you want to know what happened to him?”

Gabriel nodded slightly, probably out of shock and not a genuine care for what he had to say if anything, mouth slightly open in an _ o_ product of this uncharacteristic outburst from Aziraphale who had always been quiet and hadn’t snapped back no matter what they asked of him. Not when they’d put him on apple-duty, not when they’d sent him down to Earth, never.

“I found him. I found him in the grass, I remember, it had been this beautiful, sunny day—imagine that, all these people dying while the sun shone so brightly in the sky—and he was there in the grass with his insides falling out; just lying there, in unimaginable agony. He looked up at me and I looked down at him, and we understood each other because there’s no human or angel or devil in war, Gabriel, and I put a bullet through his head.”

“Aziraphale.”

“One soldier helping another.” He realized that he had started to cry, and he swiped the tears angrily away. How dare he cry now?

Gabriel stood there, on the threshold of their beautiful home, the ghostly sounds of dying men and gunshots resounding in the air around them, products of a time gone by. To remember was to pay respect to the sacrifices of the human race. To recount was to demand the same from another.

“And he was just one of the people I knew.” His voice was barely a whisper now. “I could tell you so many more stories like that. Hell, I could tell you about anything you want. I’m like a dictionary of suffering for this place, because I’ve _ been here _for _all of it_. Did you ever look down on a Nazi concentration camp from up there? I had to work in one, at one point, helping as many people escape as I could, yet it was never enough. Crowley helped me forge the documents. I’ve worked in hospitals, tended to the sick and the dying who still saw explosions whenever they closed their eyes and couldn’t be around loud noises without being instantly taken back there. Some of them took their own lives, some of them said they'd recovered, some of them couldn’t.” _Don't you know what it does? Can't you see how it bleeds the hope out of these wonderful people, how it bled so much of it out of _me_, can't you see?_

“Aziraphale,” the archangel said again, but he didn’t need to; he’d reached the end of his soliloquy.

“So you tell me: do you still want that war?”

He looked smaller than he ever had before. Gabriel had always been the epitome of heavenly power, with his unwavering belief in Her and their purpose; so at odds with Aziraphale’s uncertain faith. Now, he just looked lost, something horribly lonely stirring behind his cold eyes for the first time in a long time. The last time he had looked like that, Aziraphale remembered, Beelzebub had been falling from Heaven like some sick mockery of a shooting star.

“I see.” he said. They stood there in an expanding and expectant silence. Gabriel didn’t fidget, and the doorknob didn’t fall apart in Aziraphale’s hands, but it was a close thing on both counts.

“I think you should go now,” he said, when the silence had gone on for too long, when it had become clear that Gabriel would show neither remorse nor rage.

“I think so, too.” Gabriel began to walk away, but he stopped just short of reaching the bottom of the stone steps that led up to the front door. He turned to face him, looking for just a moment as if he would like to say something: _ I’m sorry_, maybe, or _I understand_, or even just_ I’ll consider_. But the moment passed, and he closed his mouth and vanished, leaving Aziraphale, alone.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley called again, shattering the melancholy of the moment. He walked up behind him, hugging him from behind and resting his chin on his shoulder. “You missed all the funny parts. Who was at the door?”

“No one, dearest,” he said, turning to press a kiss to his cheek. “No one at all.”

“Have you been—_crying_?”

“Nothing gets past _ you_, does it?” he asked with a laugh. Crowley didn’t push the matter further, and for that, he was grateful.

. . .

They went on.

Crowley still had nightmares, but now they more heavily featured walking into a burning bookshop and feeling the smoke infiltrate his lungs as he opened his mouth and screamed and screamed until his voice splintered and cracked, and his throat went raw. Now they showed him Aziraphale walking into hellfire in his place, watching a shooting star burn across the sky and knowing, just _ knowing _ who it was. Everywhere he turned, there was Azirapahle; hurt and Falling, accusatory in every way. _You should have done something_. There were a hundred thousand different ways his subconscious hurt him. _ You should do something before it’s too late_.

Really, he thought, gasping awake, it was humiliating.

It was the same, really, always the same to some extent: reaching out for Aziraphale’s hand, separated by eons and eons, by a distance so vast that no words had been conceived for its measurement. Separated by the smallest of gaps. And like holding onto water, his fumbling hands failed and then he was just Crowley, alone and arrested in the endless and ancient dark.

No, not alone.

“Crowley,” the voice said, and it was beautiful. The lamp clicked on, and he longed wretchedly for his sunglasses. Aziraphale wasn’t supposed to see him like this—weak and incapacitated, pushed to the brink of the world because, what, he was scared of a few night terrors? _ Pathetic_.

The blanket felt like an ocean pressed up against his legs, drowning him, and he kicked it off. There was a dull buzzing pooling in the ends of his limbs, tugging at his fingers; his heart was beating wildly in his chest. A rotting cesspool of misery. A fire-pit. He was a scab, picked at over and over again, never fully healing—he didn’t deserve that, to fully heal. He was here in the presence of a holy thing he had dared to love. Aziraphale might not have died in that fire, but maybe Crowley should have.

His roving eyes found Aziraphale, whose book was already put away and whose arms were already open in invitation. He understood. He always, always understood, somehow, Aziraphale with his endless, infinite compassion for all and his endless, infinite love, just for Crowley.

“Dearest mine,” he said, as Crowley reached for him, too, as he let himself be pulled into an embrace. He didn’t say anything else.

“Sometimes I think,” Crowley said, face pressed into the crook where the angel’s neck met his shoulder, “that if I kiss you, it’ll burn.”

No words, just fingers running through his hair, just kisses pressed to the top of his head and arms wrapped around him. No words for them, not tonight. They said all they needed to say with movement, and nothing was alright, but it wasn’t horrible anymore, either. They had made sure of that. A sword in hand, and the wreckage of a Bentley behind them. Their own avenging army.

He didn’t go back to sleep. He needed this respite, this safe haven, tucked away in Aziraphale’s arms; not like a heresy, but like something coveted and precious, something to protect.

The angel understood. He was an angel, after all, at the end of everything. He wasn’t Falling, and he understood.

. . .

He was brushing his teeth at the sink—being an angel, Aziraphale didn’t _ need _ to, strictly speaking, but he enjoyed the mundane routine of it—as Crowley took a bath somewhere behind him. He very pointedly didn’t look, instead focusing on the redundant movement of the toothbrush and the cool feel of the water in his mouth as he rinsed.

“What do you want to do today?” he asked, reaching blindly for some conversation to rid himself of the cotton that seemed to have wedged itself in his brain. He wondered if Crowley had a rubber duck with him, but then remembered that he _ wasn’t looking_. He began to very meticulously dry his hands with a towel. One finger at a time. Deliberate. He was in control.

“I don’t know,” Crowley said, sounding bored. He could hear the water sloshing around in the tub, and he swallowed to rid himself of the panic clawing its way up his throat. Wild and animalistic. He wasn’t supposed to be like that. He was in control here. “I was thinking we could just stay at home and marathon _ The Lord of the Rings_, how’s that sound?”

“Didn’t we do that the day before last?”

“We did._The Hobbit_, maybe.” The water was pooling around his feet, dark and freezing cold. Unseen hands, mottled and dead, latched around his ankles and scratched at his skin. Aziraphale could hear the scrape of their cracked fingernails. He could hear demons jeering, laughing, all of Hell watching and waiting. He was supposed to be _ better than this_. “It feels like one of those days, you know? We don’t have to do anything. You could join me in the tub!” he joked.

He was putting down the towel as Crowley said that, as Crowley flicked some water at him. He didn’t feel it, but he heard the faint pattering sound as it hit his clothes, and suddenly he couldn’t think straight. His brain had veered entirely off course, panic sirens wailing at full force. He felt as if he’d been caught in the Blitz once more, waiting for the bombs, watching out for the humans. There was something harsh and unyielding tightening around his chest, his throat. He couldn’t help it; he turned and he looked, and he saw. Oh, how he saw.

There was Crowley, lounging—always lounging, always with him, somehow—in the tub, no rubber duck in sight, but his hand was in the water, swirling it around in a miniature whirlpool and Aziraphale didn’t know where he was. The room was flickering dizzyingly before his eyes. The ocher and beige of the bathroom wasn’t quite there, giving way to darkness, and the image was burned into his brain: Crowley lounging in a tub, Crowley dying in a tub. They’d come so close, _ so close_. The water was rising up around him and he had to stay calm, he had to stay calm or else their hastily composed plan would be revealed and then he would lose Crowley for real so he had to just _ stay calm _ but the lapping water was at his chest and it burned a bit, and why did it burn? Even if just a bit? Was he dying? Was he Falling? Was that why he couldn’t breathe, was that why the sight of Crowley in their own tub in their own home made him feel like the life was being wrought out of him like soapy water from a sponge?

“Oh, _ fuck_,” Crowley swore, realizing.

A pathetic sound, half-formed and desperate, escaped his throat. The room slipped away from under him, black spots dotting his vision as it doubled so that there were two of him, two Aziraphales; one was dimly aware of Crowley scrabbling out of the tub and miracling clothes on, reaching for him. The other felt far more present, and the other was watching Michael as she poured holy water out of her pitcher, was watching a demon die and was thinking _ that could have been Crowley, that could have been Crowley, that couldhavebeenhim_, the other could see the demons cloistered expectantly outside the glass, and Beelzebub as they sat sprawled atop their throne, and the other was lazing in a tub full of holy water, the other the othertheother, and _ why the fuck could he not breathe_—

Someone touched his shoulder lightly, and he threw it off in his blind panic, flailing for the surface of an endless ocean, water seeping into his lungs—he couldn’t see properly, what was happening? He looked down at his hands, vision still bent over: saw one pair that was slender and had nails painted black, chipped at the edges, saw another that was softer and shaking so very badly that they appeared blurred. He couldn’t—he couldn’t—

A far-off voice was calling Aziraphale’s name, but he couldn’t hear it properly—

He was clawing at his own skin, desperate to see which pair was real, which _ one_ of the two of him was real and his nails left bright lines down the backs of his hands, down both pairs. They both welled with blood, one pair black and one pair gold, but which was real? Who was suffocating?

He was dimly aware of horrific, strangled noises, like drowning in holy water, like drowning in air, but didn’t know if he was actually making those noises or if there was another version of him, trapped inside a bathtub.

“Holy shit, holy, holy shit, Aziraphale I need you to—please, I need you to—”

Aziraphale looked up (when had he sank to the floor at the foot of the vanity?) to see Crowley, scared and frantic, leaning over him, scrabbling for any sort of foothold. His vision was obscured with tears (when had he begun to cry?).

“Stop that,” Crowley said shakily, taking his hands in his own to keep him from ruining them anymore. They were covered in golden ichor, even though he couldn’t remember doing that much damage. His knuckles were aching sharply, had he been trying to crack them again? He couldn’t remember it. “Jesus, Aziraphale, I’ve been so fucking stupid, I’m so sorry—”

“Why are _you_ sorry?” he asked, a laugh bubbling absurdly up his throat, his throat which had been clawed to shreds by the demanding animal inside of him. He laughed and it sounded more like a choked sob, as tears streamed down his face. Crowley’s face contorted painfully, as if he’d just said that he didn’t love him, after all, or that he had Fallen. He didn’t say anything in reply, instead running his thumb over the gouges on the backs of Aziraphale’s hands, the scratches at his arms, healing them. The pain in his knuckles dissipated, bringing relief. He wanted to ask him to leave them, to leave the reminders of his cowardice and defectiveness so that he may never forget, but he knew the demon would never listen to that.

“You shouldn’t have to—” he gasped out, chest heaving with the effort of living through what he just had, what he still _ was_. “You shouldn’t—_I’m _ sorry, I—I’m defective, you should go before I contaminate you.” _ Before I lose my mind entirely and say something to you that neither you nor I will ever be able to forgive; before I destroy you with this toxic malfunction of mine_.

Crowley shook his head. “Not defective. I’m staying. Understood?” He sat down next to him, keeping a respectful distance, and for that, he was grateful. He didn’t want to be touched right now. He didn’t think he could bear it.

“I never realized,” he said, faintly. “I’m sorry, Aziraphale, I never realized.”

“Not—not your fault,” he stuttered. “I—you shouldn’t have seen that. You shouldn’t be seeing this. Oh, God, you shouldn’t have seen that at all.”

“That wasn’t the first time?” Heartbreak written plainly in his words. Aziraphale had gotten good at pretending, over the years. It was a practiced art. Pretending that Crowley wasn’t his best friend, that he wasn’t helplessly and hopelessly in love with him, and now, that he wasn’t slowly falling apart. That he wasn’t _ defective_. Always living in fear that Crowley would see exactly this and recoil with revulsion, realize that he had taken a broken _ thing _ into his home and arms and bed. But he couldn’t outright lie to him, so he nodded.

He made a sad sort of noise, somewhere in his throat, but his eyes were not masked behind his sunglasses and they were incandescent.

“Let me take care of you,” he said. And Aziraphale was still crying, horrible, ugly sobbing that wrenched itself out of the very core of his being, from an unspeakable well of hurt and terror—he was supposed to be better than this, really, he was—but he couldn’t say no and he couldn’t say yes so he just leaned his head on Crowley’s shoulder and cried until he couldn’t anymore, until he had nothing more left to give. _Now, finally, you've spent all of me_. Even after that, even after going half-mad at the sight of Crowley in a bathtub and even after crying himself empty, Crowley stayed, whispering sweet nothings to him, saying _ I am here, so are you_. _ So are you_. Even after seeing him clawing at his own skin and with red, puffy eyes, he stayed, and Aziraphale loved him more than ever, more than he could possibly admit aloud.

. . .

The doorbell rang, and Aziraphale was half-expecting Gabriel to be back as he opened it. Instead, he found a human woman who looked to be about sixty, with short, curling white hair that looked like a pile of feathers atop her head, and a nervous sort of smile.

“Hello!” she said, the moment he opened the door, chipper for so early in the morning. “I’m your neighbour, technically, given the fact that we live so far away.”

He took a moment to collect his scattered thoughts; this was not what he’d been expecting _ at all._ “Well, then, I’m happy to meet you, neighbour,” he said with a somewhat mystified smile. He remembered the woman, now that he thought about it. He'd seen her several times while out on his evening walk, though she'd always looked quickly away every time his gaze had slid in her general direction.

“I’m Henrietta Wall,” she said, reaching out a hand for him to shake, which he did. “Most of my friends call me Etta, and you can feel free to do the same.”

“Aziraphale,” he said. Remembering manners, he asked, “Would you like to come in for some tea? It’s a bit chilly out today.”

“Oh, no, I really must be going. Just thought I’d stop by and say hello because I hadn’t done that yet and—is that a _ snake_?”

He turned around to look at where she was staring, wide-eyed, to see Crowley slithering up to him.

“Um.” He'd just remembered that the vast majority of humans did not live with massive reptiles who had free reign of their homes. “Yes?” he said, deciding to just, to use the modern expression, 'wing it'.

She looked somewhere in the no-man's-land between terrified and fascinated, taking an unconscious step backward. “Is he dangerous?”

“No, not at all,” he said, reaching down to let Crowley onto his arm where he immediately made to hang around his neck like some bizarre sort of scarf. “Perfectly safe, don’t you worry.”

“What’s his name?” she asked, staring unabashedly. Crowley raised his serpentine head to watch her as she dithered, faintly amused, forked tongue flickering in and out.

“His name,” Aziraphale said, blanking. “Right, his name! It’s, ah, it’s...Daisy. His name is Daisy.” He tried very hard not to laugh at the indignant look Crowley—no, _ Daisy_—gave him at that.

“Oh,” Etta Wall said, sounding a bit faint. “Hello, Daisy. Well, I’ll be off, then...” she trailed off.

“Do stop by some other time,” Aziraphale offered. “We can talk some more over tea and biscuits.”

“Sounds lovely,” she said, recomposing herself and flashing him a white smile. “Nice meeting you.”

“The pleasure’s mine.”

Crowley waited until the door had fully closed before rounding furiously on him. “Daisssy?” he hissed, affronted. “That’sss low, even for you, angel.”

"Snakes don't talk, Daisy," he reminded him, shoulders shaking with barely restrained mirth.

. . .

“Crowley!” he laughed, as he pulled him by the wrist into the brilliant afternoon sunlight. “What’s going on?”

“I want to show you something,” he said, grinning. He dropped his hand, but then grabbed it again, holding it in his own. Their fingers interwove. “Something _ special_.”

“A tree that grows cookies?” Aziraphale asked, raising his eyebrows suggestively, and Crowley swatted at his arm.

“Wouldn't you like that,” he said. “No, it’s _ this_.”

They had arrived at their destination, a small tree in the middle of the garden, that held itself tall and proud amidst the rest of the plants.

“It’s a jasmine plant,” he said, pointing out the many white flowers growing amongst the leaves. “And I grew it for you. It’s a right cocky bastard, so it’s a perfect match!”

“It’s beautiful,” Aziraphale said finally, softly, and his smile could have blinded a lesser being. “Oh, Crowley, it’s beautiful.”

The tree seemed pleased with that, rustling it’s branches in an acknowledging sort of way. Aziraphale laughed. “You like that, don’t you?” he asked, reaching up and grabbing one of the sturdier branches in the perfect imitation of a friendly handshake. The tree extended a branch and brushed up against the angel’s cheek, making him laugh again. “You gorgeous thing,” he said, and the plant reached out and placed one of it’s fragrant white flowers behind his ear. “Thank you,” he beamed, and the plant preened, the oleaceae _ whore_. Crowley scowled at it.

“It took a while to convince it to stand up straight and stop slouchimmphf—” He was cut off by Aziraphale grabbing him by the lapels and pulling him into a searing kiss, lips pressed together, fierce. That was the way of the world, the way of their world; always fierce and burning, burning, burning, in the best and worst of ways. He kissed him back, hot and desperate.

. . .

The gentle curls of his hair caught the light and turned the whole place golden, and Crowley wanted nonsensically to run his fingers through them, to feel them as they caught his fingers. Aziraphale's lips were painted a muted red, something he'd taken up that suited him all too well, and came with the unexpected side-effect of making Crowley want him to kiss him senseless whenever they were close. This last bit wasn't a new development.

His eyes were sparking with an energy he recognized, catastrophic as it was.

"Crowley," he breathed, so softly that it was hardly a word, instead just a gentle caress of the evening breeze. Aziraphale still had the jasmine flower tucked behind his ear from the garden, and its scent intermingled wonderfully with his own; old books with creaking pages, and warm, sweet chamomile, and delicate spun-sugar confections. He had to fight off the impulse to lean into the crook where his neck met his shoulder, greedily breathing it all in. "You're beautiful."

Crowley wanted to laugh, wanted to ask how he could possibly be seen as beautiful when ephemeral Aziraphale was standing before him, heart-shaped mouth cocked in a sweet smile, glowing ever so slightly. He must have made some sort of disbelieving noise in the back of his throat, because suddenly the full force of his inhuman gaze was boring into him, filling him with warmth.

Aziraphale reached out with a manicured hand, cupping his face in it. Crowley leaned into his touch almost subconsciously, raising a hand of his own to lie over his. His heart-shaped lips were still quirked in the same red smile, his eyes still electrifying and beautiful.

"Beautiful," he repeated, an echoing quality to his voice, like a thousand trumpets blaring on a grassy knoll, like a thousand angelic voices saying the words at once. His eyes were brighter than the sun. Crowley's vision shifted, doubling and tripling over like crystalline fragments of shattered glass, and there were a thousand different Aziraphales there with him, a thousand different possibilities, but not a single one in which they did not end up here; loving confessions and dreamy sighs in the pillows at night, a sky-full of stars to gaze upon and all the roses of the world blooming at their willing fingertips. "Dearest mine," he whispered, and he was radiant.

"You're not one to talk," he said. The glass wall of the greenhouse was just behind him, and he leaned back against it, feeling the solid press of the glass against him. "You're not one to talk at all."

He laughed, and the sound was like sunshine given voice. If he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him. "You know, you don't have to wear these around me, dearest," he said, other hand reaching up to tap at the temple of his sunglasses. There was another thing: how they'd gone from _ dear boy _ to _ dear _ to _ dearest_.

"I know."

"You have such beautiful eyes, Crowley, love." That word again: beautiful, beautiful, _ beautiful_. "May I?"

He tapped the smooth metal again, and Crowley managed to give a nod, a jerking and mechanical thing. He fumbled with the hand still holding his face, pressing a soft kiss to Aziraphale's palm. He sighed, a content and lovely sound, and Crowley was willing to do anything at all if it meant he could continue drawing sounds like that out of his angel.

Aziraphale tugged the shaded glasses off, folding them up and dropping them onto the windowsill. He was still smiling.

"That's better," he murmured in his lilting way, and Crowley was lost. His thumb was meandering over his cheekbone, tracing the outline. "You don't have to hide from me, dearest."

"I can never understand you, angel," he choked out. It never failed to surprise him, how easily Aziraphale could draw him out of the suave exterior he'd worked so hard to cultivate, leaving him feeling vulnerable in all the best ways.

"Perhaps that's for the best," he joked, because he knew that the two of them understood one another better than any two beings ever had before. They were one and the same, two stars blinking in and out of existence in patterns of Morse code, or perhaps one entirely of their own making: _stay, stay, stay_ _here with me._ “I am a man of many mysteries.”

“Well, I can’t doubt that,” he laughed. “O mysterious one, isn’t it?”

Aziraphale winked endearingly. The picture of debauchery, with his twinkling eyes.

"I love you," he said, and the words sounded both woefully inadequate and spectacularly fulfilling all at once. That was the wonderful duality of linguistics, though, more accurately, the wonderful duality of Aziraphale; he who was both the wrath and the bright of coming dawn, who was both the sickening plunge of the sword, the recoil of the rifle, and the relief in coming home safe and sound, the warmth of a lover’s embrace.

"I love you too, dearest." And then he was kissing him as if he was the only thing left in all of existence, as if he were the most marvelous of all of Her creations, as if they were standing at the end of the Earth and peering into the endless ether, unwilling to debate who would take the first step out into the void. There was a hunger to it, a greedy and grappling need. There was a mapping of teeth and lips and tongue—oh, the _ devilish _ things Aziraphale could do with his tongue—, they were cartographers, the two of them. There was no real need to pause for breath, but they did anyway.

_ Like real humans do_, Aziraphale had once said. His fingers were weaving determinedly into Crowley's hair, leaning into him so that his back was pressed firmly up against the cool glass, like a butterfly on display. His lips were slightly parted, tongue dragging along his lower lip in a way that made his knees want to give way a bit. It could only charitably be described as _ kissing _ now, really; devouring could be the only word good enough for the way Aziraphale's tongue was hungrily pushing into his mouth, and Crowley could only enthusiastically go along with him. They didn't need to breathe, but he pulled away anyway.

"Crowley," he murmured, tilting his head with two fingers at his jaw so that he was angled just so, lipstick smudged, flushed (as he, too, surely must have been) and slightly breathless, "I want to _ ruin _ you."

"Then do it," he answered, and this time he was the one to surge forward, capturing his lips in another kiss. He tasted of honey, and jam tarts, and lingering ozone. He was intoxicating, a level of ecstasy surely more than enough to melt a mortal mind, literally and figuratively speaking. His own hands had found purchase around his middle, holding him close and unwilling to let go. Greedy and thoughtless. They had spent long enough dancing around one another. He _ wanted _ Aziraphale to ruin him, desperately. They stumbled to the couch, unable to keep their hands off one another. Oh, they were greedy, and wanting, and demanding.

He fell back on the couch, Aziraphale on top of him, kissing him open mouthed and _ filthy _ in the comfort of their home.

"I want you," he pleaded. "Aziraphale, please, I want you."

"How will you have me?" he teased, leaning in for a kiss and stopping just short of his lips. He made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat.

"Now. I'll have you now," Crowley said, and dragged him down so that the space was gone.

He kissed him again and again—the exposed lines of his collarbone and the sharp cut of his jaw and the canvas of his neck, and all manner of other places besides.

"Why didn't we do this before, over those six thousand years?" he gasped out, as Aziraphale sucked a spot on his neck. There would definitely be a mark there, later, and he thought that maybe he should be upset about that—he had a reputation to uphold, after all—but then he realized that he really didn't care. "Why didn't we—we—_oh_—" he broke off with a frankly embarrassing sound.

"I'm thinking the same thing," he said. "Why do anything else when I could be on top of you?"

That statement only heightened his flush, making Aziraphale laugh into the crook where his neck met his shoulder, the same spot he'd practically bitten into mere moments ago. _ Bastard_, he thought, lovingly.

. . .

"Beautiful," Aziraphale said, and it was all too much, the feel of his hands and his lips and his velvet voice, low and sonorous in his ear as they moved. "Lovely. Pulchritudinous. Elysian. You are my nepenthe, Crowley, dearest." His heart felt fit to burst.

"Aziraphale," he managed. "Aziraphale, oh, please, please—" he didn't know what he was begging for, only that he was.

"You are a prayer for which no words exist," he said, and no one should be able to say such beautiful things with such beautiful lips, and do such wicked things with their hands at the same time. "You are every star in the sky going supernova all at once, you are a gunshot and a prairie fire, you are the most exquisite of all Her creations, you are, you are, _ you are_.”

. . .

Things did not immediately fix themselves.

Crowley still walked in on Aziraphale as he dug subconsciously into his own skin, or as he stood in the kitchen with mismatched socks on his feet and as his fingers broke the wooden counter to splintering pieces. Stood there with something horribly vacant behind his eyes, like peering into the windows of a house and seeing abandoned rooms and sparse furniture covered in ghostly white dropcloth, or with something frantic and feral rearing there, terror and rage intermingling.

Aziraphale still watched as Crowley woke gasping from nightmares almost every night, and as he refused to light the fireplace, ever, and certainly wouldn’t let Aziraphale do it, stopping him with jittery hands and pleading eyes. Watched as he curled in on himself, sometimes, sullen and afraid.

But Crowley also left him flowers, hidden around the house, and Aziraphale still kissed him as he woke up in the mornings. Crowley still bought him books with grumbles and protests that served to poorly mask a nature that wasn’t demonic in the slightest, and Aziraphale still curled up next to him on the couch every movie night, blinking cat-like at the television screen.

The question was, what made a home? It was nothing and everything all at once, really; it was two figures, half angel, half devil, all something else entirely, marred by war and love immeasurable. Love that overflowed from their giving hearts, love that imbued itself in everything they touched. Think now of magpies, always collecting, always collecting, decorating their nests with mismatched stories and half-forgotten tales of whimsy. Crows with glossy black wings and crooked beaks and intelligent eyes, and doves cooing in the branches of jasmine trees, and owls hooting softly in the night as an angel and a demon made love, or read to one another, or laughed so hard at the other’s awful jokes that wine almost came out of their noses.

Think now of books: they were librarians, the two of them, tucking everything lovingly away on shelves, occasionally pulling one out and saying _ look at this, look at this. Do you remember? I do, and I know you do, too_. Think now of stars; glittering and imperfectly amaranthine. Amaranth, the flower of never fading, or wisteria for tender love and bliss, or alstroemeria for friendship.

Monsters were always hungry, always searching, always finding. But always, in the end, fought off, be it by love or hatred or simply the searching, demanding hands of Death.

What made a home?

Crowley didn’t know. Neither did Aziraphale. But they had one, in a cozy cottage on Nightingale Lane, and in each other, and for them, that was more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> (Regarding Aziraphale: I watched Bright Young Things and. and Miles Maitland. I just. I couldn't resist.)
> 
> Find me on Tumblr at: @/sannikov-land. This was long but ultimately fun to write so let's hope that it paid off! I am now going to take a very long nap. Also, because I am a whole dumbass, I realized the day after posting that I'd forgotten a whole part while moving this from my docs to here, so this has been edited to include that.
> 
> Please leave a comment or a kudos if so inclined; they always make me very happy! I hope you enjoyed.


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